Taste
by MasterShaper
Summary: Tseng has a secret. ONESHOT. AU.


**Taste**

The Shinra Headquarters is a HUGE building, seventy-seven floors high. Thousands of people bustle around inside it, going about their daily duties. Given the sheer number of people employed by Shinra to work in this building, it isn't a surprise that you could find a diverse range of occupations in the building. From janitors to assassins, you name the job, and it is likely that you'd be able to find at least one person suiting your description working in the Shinra Headquarters.

Now, from THAT unflattering description of the Headquarters, it should be glaringly-obvious that secrets are almost impossible to keep if you work in the Shinra building. If your secret was how you kept your hair so silky smooth, the cook in the cafeteria will know exactly what brand of shampoo you use, and she probably knows this trivial fact courtesy of your trusted confidant, the staff counselling officer (who was hired to provide mental therapy to some of the more troubled employees, but who is a blabbermouth nonetheless). And if your secret is something to do with anti-Shinra organizations…

Well, we don't want to discuss the Turks right now, do we?

… But then again, no one actually dares to try and dig around and discover the secrets kept among the Turks, do they?

Therefore, we shall now get together and delve into the BIGGEST secret kept inside the Turks' inner circle. It is a secret kept by none other than Tseng, the heartless, dot-headed Chief of the Turks.

Here's the secret, so brace yourselves!

Tseng. Likes. To…

Cook.

And we shall find out just _how _the other Turks found out about this interesting little tidbit of information…

xxx

"Mmm, tasty," moans Reno, sounding as though he was experiencing the gastronomic equivalent of an orgasm , "These chocolate brownies are heavenly…"

"Eww, just watching you makes me lose my appetite," said Elena, making a face at Reno's crumb covered face. There were even crumbs all over his suit! (Reno had once found what looked like crumbs in his underwear, but he figured that Elena didn't have to know _that_ particular piece of information…)

"More for us, then," said Rude, throwing his head back and dropping a large piece of brownie cake into his mouth. Rude didn't say much nor did he eat much, but get between him and one of Tseng's brownies, and you would have the shit beaten out of you beyond the limits of human pain.

"No fair, chrome-dome!" Elena pouted, grabbing a piece of brownie from the suitcase they were in - there were only two pieces left. Tseng had called-in sick today, which explained why his three subordinates were ravenously attacking his 'hidden' brownie stash (Okay, maybe a suitcase under an office table isn't _that_ suspicious, but I digress…)

Reno choked on the piece he was eating, as he tried to laugh and swallow at the same time. Rude's hair was a missing entity that you didn't bring up in daily conversation, if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders.

Rude's tanned face turned fifty shades of red as he tried to digest the delicious brownie and Elena's words at the same time. He finally settled for snatching-up and eating the last two pieces of brownie cake from the suitcase, causing Reno and Elena to let out loud cries of anger and disappointment. Indeed, among the Turks, it was considered to be somewhere close to a travesty of justice if you took the last pieces of brownie cake from Tseng's suitcase.

"Rude, I'm going to shove my arm down your throat, pull out the brownies, and eat them," said Reno, drawing his electro-mag rod and cranking up the voltage, "And then, I'm gonna eat them, and stick my arm in again to pull your guts out through your mouth…"

"Rude swallowed the last pieces of brownie cake, and stood up, upending his chair, "TRY IT, SQUIRREL HEAD!"

Reno turned an interesting shade of pink, since like Rude, his hair was _also_ a revered entity that was beyond Holiness, and which could have stopped Meteor if it had been there to do the job.

With a loud battle cry, Reno lunged at Rude (or specifically, his midsection, since Rude was _that_ tall), brandishing his sparking EMR. Rude caught him in mid-lunge, and threw him bodily into the wall. Reno slammed into the cheap plasterboard with an audible WHUMP! and fell to the floor, leaving several large cracks on the wall.

At that moment, seeing Reno groaning in pain on the floor, with Rude approaching his prone form with a nightstick, Elena's mental light bulb flickered to life with a brainwave.

"Let's go to Tseng's place! He might have more of them at home!" she squealed, snapping Reno and Rude out of their battle-induced blood-lust (Rude was clubbing Reno's head with his nightstick when she interfered).

"That's an idea, but just _where_ does Mr. Stick-Up-My-Ass live?" asked Reno, rubbing his head where Rude had battered him, "And Rude, I'm gonna whoop yo' ass later for this."

Elena rolled her eyes and sighed, "You men are sooo ignorant. His address is printed on the outside of his suitcase."

"He has a suitcase?" Rude asked, apparently clueless all of a sudden.

Elena pointed to the brownie suitcase, "What do you call that?"

xxx

SCREEECH!!!

"FOR MAKO'S SAKE, STOP!" shouted Elena, as Reno took a corner at 60 miles-per-hour, without even trying to drop gears. The car's engine was screaming in protest, as they drove onto the street Tseng lived on.

"Come on, Laney! We're almost there," replied Reno, as his left side mirror clipped a mailbox, "Ah, there it is!"

Reno amazingly got his car into the driveway of Tseng's house, narrowly-missing a large black motorcycle that was chained to a pillar. Rude's eyes grew wide at the sight of the mean machine.

"Is that Tseng's?"

"Damn straight it is," answered Elena, "The Boss-man drives that monstrosity to work every day. Wakes up half the damn neighbourhood."

"Let's see if he's awake!" said Reno happily, bounding up to Tseng's front door (ignoring the sign which warned that trespassers would be shot, and survivors shot again) and ringing the bell several times in quick succession.

Several soft footsteps were heard, and a small, concealed hatch slid open on the door, at about waist-height. A pistol barrel stuck out, and Tseng's voice was heard.

"Identify yourself. I've got my pistol aimed at your junk."

"Hey, Boss-man! It's your friendly neighbourhood Turk, Reno!"

"For the love of all that is remotely-Holy… What the Hell are you doing here?!"

"We… Uh… That is to say…"

"Reno…" Tseng's voice trailed off menacingly, as the sound of his pistol cocking was heard through the door.

"We ate your brownie stash," said Rude helpfully, from beside the door, where Tseng couldn't aim at Rude Jr., "And we wanted to see if you had some more here."

"So it IS you two who have been eating my brownies!"

"Three, actually…"

"Please don't tell me you dragged Elena here as well."

"Hi, sir!"

Something sounding like a muffled 'For Holy's sake' was heard, and several locks clicked. The door opened…

To reveal Tseng in a set of casual clothes, and an apron embroidered with 'World's BEST Boss!' on it. His right hand was still clutching his pistol, aand his left hand was holding a large ring of keys. Several ladles and spatulas stuck out of his apron's pocket.

"You were… cooking?" asked Elena, eyes wide with surprise.

"I was _baking_. Brownies, to be exact," replied Tseng, raising an eyebrow, "I had a hunch that my brownies would be missing tomorrow when I returned to work."

"Can we come in? Something smells good," said Reno, sniffing the air.

"Come in. But don't. Touch. Anything."

xxx

Tseng's house was practically-empty, save for a small television set, a small sofa set, several bookshelves, and a large Alastian dog (Elena felt so sad looking at it eyes) chained to the sofa. He had locked his bedroom as soon as Reno entered the house, and went to the kitchen. The three of them followed him to the kitchen, where they could only gawk.

His kitchen was like a page out of a food magazine. Shelves of bottled spices, powders, and pickled items lined the walls, and a large oven was operating in the corner. A tray of brownies was visible through the glass door, slowly being baked. A large stove sat on the countertop, and a large blender was half-filled with some kind of greenish liquid next to the stove.

Before anyone could say anything, the oven beeped, and Tseng extracted the tray of brownies using a pair of mitts.

"Brownies, anyone?"

**END**


End file.
